Peter's Smile
by Flame Tigress
Summary: As Ender is dying, he calls out for Peter, and Plikt can only guess what, in his fevered dreams, he is trying to say. Here, Peter gives his incisive replies.


**Disclaimer:** Thank you, Orson Scott Card, for the wonderful, complex, angsty characters you created, and from whom I become wealthier only in intellect, when you could still write.

**Required ****Reading** Entire Ender Quartet: _Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, _and _Children of the Mind._

**Author's Note: **Part Two of the (completely coincidental) Three Introspectives on Ender from People Whose Names Mean Rock. This is based on when Ender, in a coma and dying, said that one word: "Peter." The lines in italics assume that Plikt's guesses as to what Ender meant by that word are correct; but she, as a Speaker-to-be, is just as qualified to know what the Dead-to-be would say for themselves as full-fledged Speakers are to speak for the Dead.

**Peter's Smile**

_Peter._

You call to me beyond the grave, and here I am, with nothing better to do than to answer.

But why did you call out to _me_? Why not to Valentine, your angel, your savior, your protector and shield? Why to me, the nightmare that lurks in your shadows? What do you want, Third? Ah, how long has it been, my brother, since "Third" was the greatest aspersion associated with the name of "Ender"? Does the older, lesser shame comfort you, "Ender Xenocide"? And what do you want from me?

_Peter, wait for me._

Wait for you. That is all I have done, these long years, Ender – nearly three thousand of them. I have waited for you, caught in your own little capsule in time, to stop running away from the years – to stop standing still in the years – and die.

But that is not what you mean, is it, little brother? You'll always remember me to be so much bigger than you, always strides ahead of your little six-year-old legs. Wait for me, big brother; you're too far ahead. You're too far away. You'll never know, will you, what it felt like for me to be bound to earth when you had already flown away. I with my long legs calling out to you to wait for me. I who stood over you, calling you bugger, ready to crush you like one beneath my foot, I was in _your_ shadow. Wait for me, Ender; I can't catch up to you. I want my turn to save the world, too.

But you never tagged along after me. You never followed me around like the little boy who would say, Wait for me, big brother. I never heard you say it: _Peter, wait for me._

_Peter, did I do well?_

And who am I to judge that, Ender, when I wasn't even found worthy of the institution that _you_ turned on its head? Ender Wiggin the Savior of Mankind, who am I to judge you? I was the Hegemon; I was loved and revered by worlds; after you saved the world from the outsiders, I saved the world from itself; is that why you look to me for approval? No. It's because I am your big brother. It's because the last time you ever saw me, you still had to crane your neck to look at my face.

You want my judgment, Ender? You killed two boys, and didn't have the brains to figure out that they were dead; didn't have the self-control to stop when they were down; didn't even have the ruthlessness to _want_ them dead. You destroyed an entire planet, still convinced that you were playing a _game_; you became the "savior of the world" trying to do no more than get the game to end before it killed you; and what's more, you didn't save your world – you merely massacred a race that had already decided to make its peace with mankind. You defamed your own name in your hurry to prove your compassion to yourself – it's _your_ fault they call you Xenocide now, not Savior, and the fault of that bit of holy writ you called _The Hive Queen_. It's your doing that they tell lies about you, and you know what's the worst thing? You don't just let them tell the lies, Ender, you _believe_ them. And now you're dying – why? Because you didn't pay enough attention to yourself. You're getting bored to death, Ender, because you married a woman too selfish to see what she's doing to you. _Peter, did I do well?_ What does it look like to you? You made a mess of things, Ender Xenocide. You fucked up pretty thoroughly, you little bugger, you little Third.

_Peter, don't hurt me._

Do you really think that's in my power, little brother? Sure, I threatened you with death all those years ago, I pressed my foot against your groin, my knee against your chest, and made you hurt, made you afraid. But sadly enough, Ender, I am dead. I stopped hurting you long, long ago – I never saw you again after you left, little six-year-old boy off to play soldier. The only reason I am still hurting you is because you won't let go of me. I can't stop hurting you because you won't stop hurting yourself. You torture yourself with your memories of me and what you thought I was. What you thought _you_ might become, or already be. Haven't you proven your own gentleness and compassion enough, with all your years as a Speaker for the Dead, your every word and deed and breath denouncing who you were when you committed near-xenocide? Your every act has been of healing – haven't you atoned enough? _Peter, don't hurt me_? Ender, don't hurt yourself.

Yet wherever you are when you call out to me, _Peter, don't hurt me,_ you still feel my knee in your chest, cutting off your air, as I say, "I could kill you like this. Just press and press until you're dead." And I can't help you, Ender, wherever you are.

_Peter, I hate you._

And I, you, Ender. I hated your very existence. I hated you because your every breath said to me, "You aren't good enough. You have been weighed and measured and found wanting." I hated you, the brilliant little five-year-old who still had his monitor, could still go where I would always be shut out; then, the chosen little six-year-old who went to that place where to me the door was still forever barred; and finally, the revered little eleven-year-old who was the "one," the only hope for mankind, the only hope that _I_ almost was and should have been. I hated you, hated you, wanted you dead, wanted you stupid or lacking somehow, wanted you to fail where I had failed. But I also loved you. Because you were my brother. Didn't you hear me say it, Ender? I knew you were awake – your breathing was too light for you to be asleep, and I don't waste anything I say. "Ender, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know how it feels, I'm sorry, I'm your brother, I love you." How could you ever know from all the things I'd said that this wasn't a lie? How could you know, brilliant and afraid, that this wasn't somehow a trap, but the only truth I could tell that wasn't tainted with bitterness? I know why you'd hate me – I was too cruel to you. I was a murderer in your eyes. I understand why I haunted all your dreams, sleeping and waking. But I know that you love me, as well. I don't just assume it, because I'm your brother. You wrote _The Hegemon_. You understood me enough to write it; you had to love me enough to understand.

But it's not really me you hate anymore, is it? _The Hegemon_ still stands as proof. It's yourself you hate. You will never stop seeing me as the part of you that is cruel, murderous, ruthless, pitiless. You see yourself not as a whole, but as the badly matched composite of two parts: Valentine, the kind and compassionate protector; and Peter, the sadistic evil bastard. That is, after all, the image of yourself that you took in your mind Outside. You were always no more than the sum of Valentine and Peter, everything you wanted to be and everything you dreaded you were. There was never just _Ender,_ the complex mix of good and evil that all humans are, as you yourself expressed when you Spoke for me, the dead. And you are still convinced that it was the _Peter_ in you – the Peter you saw in the mirror at the End of the World, who couldn't stop striking an enemy until he was sure the enemy would not get up again – that killed two boys and a planet. But how do you know? How do you know it wasn't the Ender in you, whoever that is? Ender. Finisher. Not one who liked to savor others' pain, but the one who wanted it all to _stop_ – Stilson's bullying; Bonzo's hatred; the wearying, harrowing game that was destroying you.

But wherever you are in your mind – _Peter, I hate you,_ you say to the dark-haired, handsome-faced ten-year-old boy who sneers at you, calling you bugger, calling you Third. _Peter, I hate you,_ you say to the ugly-beautiful face of all you fear you might be, all you hate in yourself. And _You are not at all like Peter,_ Valentine assures you, cradled in her arms, as your crying quiets.

_Peter, for one smile of yours I'd die or kill._

I gave you many smiles, Ender – don't you remember? But you didn't want the smiles I gave you – smiles of ridicule; smiles of menace; the smiles of a predator who has cornered his prey, who catches the fear in his victim's scent. What kind did you want? A smile of love? A smile of approval? The nearest to _that_ you ever got, I suppose, was a handshake and a "You lucky little pinheaded fart-eater." Am I to give you that smile, now that you've killed? Now that you die?

You fucked up; I've already told you that. Your life has been a mess. The sins of all mankind you have carried as a cross on your shoulders all these years, and they spit upon you on your road to Calvary. You're almost there, Ender; only a little while until you're crucified, executed by your own contempt for yourself. And that's your biggest mistake, Ender – your contempt for yourself. Don't you understand that none of it was your fault? Six years of your life were made of lies, but they weren't yours. You were the gun, Ender, not the finger on the trigger. _It was me,_ you said, even as the lone survivor of xenocide pardoned you, told you it was never your fault. _It was the choice I made to break the rules and end it – three times I broke the rules to end it, and I did, and now there is blood on my hands._ When will you understand that if not for the lies, you never would have been a murderer? Whose forgiveness will lift the cross from your shoulders, if not your own?

Is it my forgiveness you look for? I who stand for the part of you that committed your great crime, I who sinned and yet redeemed myself, is it my smile of forgiveness for which you would die as you die now, or kill and bloody your hands again?

No. Not now, not in the tortured dreams of your dying brain. You want the dark-haired, cruel, ugly-beautiful ten-year-old boy to smile warmly at his six-year-old brother; say, _Thank you, Ender, for turning the page for me while I practice the piano_; say, _Would you like to be the astronaut this time, Ender? I don't mind at all_; say, _Good morning, Ender_ or _Good night_ with a truly kind smile. You could die of happiness after you see that smile, the first genuine smile your big brother ever gave you. You would kill whomever I wanted you to kill, you would damn your soul to hell for a smile of love and brotherhood from your big brother Peter, whose threats and torment you're so tired of. But it's too late, Ender. It's too late.

I'd smile for you now, beyond the grave, if I could; I dead and you dying, I'll smile for you now. You can't see it, perhaps you never will, but you once heard the words in this smile, because no truth I speak is ever wasted.

Ender, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know how it feels, I'm sorry, I'm your brother, I love you.

**Author's P.S.: **Sorry I quoted from "A Knight's Tale" ("you have been weighed and measured and found wanting"). It was kind of a lame movie but that was a good phrase.


End file.
